by B. V. Larson
“From my understanding,” Drusus continued, “the Pegs are not flying horses at all.”
There were a few twittering laughs. Drusus was bad at jokes, and he’d dropped another bomb as far as I could tell.
“They are, in fact, enterprising creatures that resemble six-legged felines. They can run on all six, or they can rear up and manipulate objects with their front two appendages.”
He displayed pictures, and people oohed over them.
The Pegs looked like freaks to me. Short-furred, with the head of a lynx, maybe. They had some extra legs with creepy-looking black hands at the end. I didn’t like the look of them right off.
“So cute,” Galina said.
“Cute…?” Drusus asked. “Not really, they’re apex predators. They weigh around six hundred kilograms on average—and that’s with a slightly lower gravity index on their home world.”
The image shifted to show the 51 Pegasi star system. My stomach rumbled mournfully.
“Exoplanets that could support life were discovered in this star system by Earth astronomers as early as 1995. It turned out later, when these discoveries could be verified, that life would be comfortable for Earthlings on the Peg home world. Even their star is quite similar to our own sun.”
Up until this point Drusus had been rather upbeat, but now he frowned and looked serious.
“We’ve been trying to communicate with 51 Pegasi since the… incident on Earth. We’ve had no luck. They either aren’t answering, or they’re not able to answer.”
He paused for a moment to let that sink in.
“That fact, coupled with the knowledge that the enemy ship is heading directly toward 51 Peg has led scientists to believe a disaster has occurred on this planet.”
“What kind of disaster?” Armel asked, speaking slightly out of turn. “Have they decided to rebel? To create monsters and strike at their local enforcers?”
“That’s unlikely,” Drusus said. “It’s a mystery, really. We just don’t know what’s going on. We’ll arrive in a few days, and we’ll get our answers then.”
Armel’s mustaches drooped. He swirled a glass of brown liquid, and ice cubes spun with the movement. Then, he tilted back his head and gulped it down.
“Our fear is that the situation is worse than a mundane rebellion,” Drusus continued.
He had my attention now, despite the nearness of food. Everyone else fell quiet too. We all wanted to know what the hell was going on.
“We’re considering the possibility… that they may have taken their skills with artificial intelligence too far. They may have created something smarter than themselves. Something which has gained sentience and decided to take over their planet.”
You could have heard a pin drop for the next several seconds. Not liking uncomfortable silences just on principle, I whistled. The sound was low, long, and loud.
Drusus glanced my way, then looked back at the star charts that glowed on the wall behind him. “That scenario only fits some of the facts. For instance, it explains why the invader was full of strange cyborgs with electronic minds. It also explains why the ship and its alien crew might want to return to Pegasi after being injured by our defensive efforts. It does not, however, explain how these creatures could have built such an advanced ship so quickly.”
I raised my hand and wiggled my fingers in the air. Drusus reluctantly called on me.
“The situation seems obvious to me, sir. The Pegs are dead and gone. Maybe they have been gone for a while. The AI knew it couldn’t take us all at once, so it kept up appearances. Shipping AI toys out for trade, for instance. Now that it’s ready, it went for us first, as we are only star system in the area with a fleet to oppose them.”
Drusus stared me with squinting eyes. He nodded at last. “We’ve thought of that. We’re seriously hoping it’s not the case.”
Something wonderful happened right about then. The last centurion—it was Venner, of all people—finally sat her ass down with a plate of food.
Not waiting for the okay, I dug in and started to eat. The food was just as delicious as it looked. In fact, I was the first man to return to the buffet for a third helping.
Eating is serious business for me. I think that’s true for anyone who’s two meters in height and over one hundred twenty lean kilos of bone and muscle.
As a result of my natural hunger, I didn’t hear the rest of the speeching. It was just as well in the end, because no one knew what we were going to meet up with when we got to 51 Peg, anyway. Not really. They were just talking at the problem so everyone felt better.
Oh, they had their theories and plans—but none of them meant diddly-squat. Not until we came nose-to-nose with the enemy, took his measure, and devised a plan to destroy him.
And if we failed…? Well, it wouldn’t be first time a race of machines took out a biotic species.
Not by a longshot.
-28-
51 Pegasi was a pleasant looking star. When we first arrived, it was pretty much indistinguishable from old Sol back home.
That impression shifted when the klaxons began to wail and Legate’s PA system began making alarming announcements.
“Enemy craft detected. Enemy craft detected. All hands to battle stations. Follow your deployment arrows immediately.”
“Frig it,” I said, deciding to stay and finish the leak I’d been taking in my module’s tiny officer’s head.
The problem with shipboard emergencies is they didn’t mean much to ground-pounders. Unless they boarded us, we were as useless as tits on a boar.
Just as I was zipping up, a pounding began at the door.
“I’ll be right out!” I called. “Get the troops to gear up!”
“Yes sir,” Moller said, her voice coming through the door in a muffled state.
I shook my head. It was always Moller. She was built like a fireplug, twice as tough, and a very focused woman.
The ship trembled just as I was stepping out of the closet-sized facilities. We were maneuvering. I threw an arm wide to catch myself, then glanced down at the arrows on the floor.
The red arrows were for ground troops. They led out into the main passages.
“Shit…” I muttered to myself.
I’d dared to hope we’d sit this one out in our cubicles, but that wasn’t going to happen. We were being directed to defensive positions.
Could the enemy really be thinking of boarding a transport carrying two active legions? They had some balloon-sized gonads on them, if they were.
Two minutes later I was trotting at the head of a column of troops. Most of them were fiddling with their straps and smart-ties, trying to get their armor and other gear to stop banging them in the back of their knees.
Tuning into command chat, I listened to a lot of confusion.
“We’ve got a bogey on the port bow. Solution plotted, no impact unless it changes course.”
“We should leave it alone,” a female said, I thought it was Galina.
“We should shoot it down,” Armel suggested.
“Armel’s right,” Drusus said, “free the port cannons. Take it down the moment it’s in range.”
The situation concerned me. Our top commanders normally let the ship’s captain fly Legate—but with a praetor on board, anyone else could be overruled. Drusus was like a four-star general from the old days.
We followed our red arrows until they led to a circle—a stopping point. To my surprise, the spot was the primary lift lobby. From here, the various traffic between the decks came and went continuously.
“Well…” Harris said, “at least we aren’t sitting out in the crawlspace between the hulls.”
He was talking about Death World, I realized. Back then, we’d been placed inside the outermost defensive region, an airless void between the inner and outer hull of the transport. We’d seen plenty of action that day, I recalled.
“Leeson,” I said, “you’re in charge. I’m going up to Gold Deck to see what’s what.”
/> My adjuncts all looked at me in surprise and concern. Adjunct Barton dared to take a half-step toward me.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Centurion?” she asked.
Right off, I was sorry I’d slept with her. It was a grand mistake by any measure, but I’d hoped some more time would pass before it bit me in the ass.
No such luck.
“Uh…” I said, thinking of an angle. Harris and Leeson were already exchanging surprised glances. “I’m full of bad ideas so—fingers crossed!” I said this with a smile, deciding to take the whole thing lightheartedly.
Slapping the elevator call button, I stepped inside the first car that showed up.
“Ten minutes, tops,” I told my officers. “If anyone calls or something happens, message me immediately.”
Erin took another step toward me, but she halted and didn’t say anymore. Maybe she’d sensed the heightened interest of her colleagues.
Behind her, Leeson made a heart symbol with his fingers. He put it over his chest and broke it apart with a sad shake of the head.
Damn. They knew something was up already.
Ignoring them all, I rode the lift to Gold Deck. The mood was chaotic. I tried to stay out of the way, but Graves spotted me.
“Centurion!” he shouted. “What’s wrong?”
“Uh… Nothing special, sir. I was wondering—”
Graves’ expression downshifted from concern to anger.
“Were you wondering why centurions get demoted to adjunct over and over? Well, a common reason is desertion of assigned posts.”
“Sorry sir. I’ll head right back down to the elevator lobby—but, you see, I was worried that something was going off up here.”
Graves squinted his already squinty eyes at me. I could see he was full of mistrust, curiosity and bedevilment. I’d seen that look before on my superior officers faces countless times.
The truth was I’d often been a misunderstood individual. As a consequence of my naturally helpful attitude and cheerful disposition, I’d been enlisted in any number of off-color escapades by other officers. Due to this checkered history, some of them had come to distrust me when I showed up at odd times.
“You know something, don’t you?” Graves asked, demonstrating exactly the kind of paranoia I’d lived with for decades.
“Huh…?”
“You know why those Peg ships are coming at us, is that it?”
I blinked twice. My mouth must have hung open. Graves hated that dumb-ass expression, despite the fact I couldn’t help it. He’d come to see it as some kind of dodge—the trouble was, this time it was indicative of nothing more than honest confusion on my part.
“Sir, I’m completely ignorant about any ships coming from—did you say they were Peg ships, sir?”
“That’s right, as if you didn’t know. They’re coming up from their home world. Now, I want you to confess to me: this is some kind of special op you cooked up with Claver, isn’t it?”
Claver. That was a name I hadn’t heard in a while. He was the most infamous space traveler in province 921.
“If I ever see Claver again, sir, I plan to kill him.”
Graves gave me a few more seconds of his evil eye before he shook his head and walked off.
“Get off this deck, McGill. Confine yourself to your station, or I’ll have you confined elsewhere.”
“Got it, sir.”
Doing an about-face, I headed back down to my unit again. But I wasn’t happy.
“What did you find out, Centurion?” Leeson asked me.
“Not much… but there are ships on the way up here—from 51 Peg.”
They blinked at me uncomprehendingly.
“Yeah, you heard me. Ships are coming at Legate—right now. But not from that giant cue-ball out there. They’re coming from the planet.”
“Holy shit,” Leeson said. “That’s not good. Are they talking? Are they—?”
“I don’t know,” I interrupted. “If you want more info, you can go up and sniff around on Gold Deck yourself.”
“Wait a minute,” Erin said, putting her hand on my bicep. Her hand lingered there, and she looked in my eyes. “So, we’re not talking about that giant spherical ship—we’re talking about other ships? Coming toward us? That indicates 51 Peg is compromised.”
I blinked at her. It obviously did mean that, but I hadn’t had a chance to absorb it fully.
Erin took her hand off my arm now—but it was way too late. People had seen it.
No other adjunct or veteran in my unit would have left that lingering hand on me so long. No way—and they all knew it.
It was high time for a distraction.
“Natasha!” I boomed, and she came running.
“Centurion?”
“Hook me up, girl. I need a feed from outside.”
She glanced around at the adjuncts, who were all curious. She nodded.
“Give me a minute.” She walked away and began hacking.
One sought-after resource for every serious officer in Varus was a tech with solid hacking skills. Having such a person on your staff made the difference between knowing the score and only knowing what the brass wanted you to know.
Barton looked at me, and she shook her head. “This outfit is so different than Victrix.”
“Took two years to figure that out, did it?” Harris laughed.
Barton smiled back, and I was glad to see it. She was fitting in better this year. On our previous campaign, she’d never been one of the gang—not really. She’d been like some kind of snooty exchange student from a better place.
Leaving them to plan what defensive actions we could take in what amounted to a wide corridor, I followed Natasha.
She’d found a source of power, hooked up her satchel-based computer, and she was already making it hum.
“Decryption algorithm,” she said. “It helps that I already have all the keys—I just have to figure out which one they’re using right now.”
I nodded, letting her work. It didn’t take long.
“I’ve got something,” she said about a minute later. “It’s an external feed from a repair drone. They left it out there to weld, and it auto-shutdown. Now, I’m waking it up… adjusting the camera angle…”
A few moments later, she relayed the results to my tapper.
There was a moon nearby, and a planet that looked much smaller in the distance—but wait. That wasn’t a moon. That had to be the alien ship.
“No sign of the smaller ships coming up toward us?” I asked.
“No… not with this. The drone welder doesn’t have long-range lidar, or anything like that. But, James… that big ship, it’s not moving. It’s just sitting there.”
“Why would it do that? Why not fly over to 51 Peg and get fixed, or destroy the planet, or whatever those crazy aliens have in mind?”
She looked at me, and her tongue slipped out to touch her lips.
“I don’t know—but I can make some guesses. The ship was damaged. It flew in warp a long way with that door open.”
“Can you confirm that it’s still unable to close?”
Natasha nodded. “It looks that way. I’m getting scraps from other reports…”
Looking over her shoulder, I smiled. She was reading Galina’s email—probably before the tribune herself had gotten around to it.
“Hmm…” I said. “The ship might have suffered internal damage. If you go into warp with the window open… All that radiation can’t be good for the skin.”
“No. No it can’t.”
She ran some numbers, some calculations. “I’ve got it. The ships coming from 51 Peg aren’t headed toward Legate. That’s clear now. They’re headed to that giant ship.”
We locked eyes.
“James,” she said, “I’m pretty sure they’re moving to repair the super-ship. That scenario matches all the data points. Their ship is damaged, the ships coming out aren’t warships, they’re civilian vessels.”
“What do we do
about that?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I’m not an admiral or a praetor. Ask them.”
“You know, I think I might just do that.”
-29-
A rush of small ships moved to cluster around the big spherical invader we’d chased all the way from Earth. Once the brass aboard our two transports was convinced these ships weren’t going to attack us immediately, they rotated my unit off “hall monitor duty” as Leeson was fond of calling it.
As we were wrapping it up and handing the post over to another unit, a team of primus-level officers stepped out of the elevator. Winslade was among them.
“Ah!” he said. “If it isn’t our legion’s most intrepid crew of ruffians. You’ve been busy today, haven’t you McGill?”
I tossed a glance at Natasha, wondering if Winslade had somehow figured out that we’d been hacking officer accounts all day. She looked scared, but she wasn’t speaking up.
“Uh…” I said. “That’s right, sir. We’re ready for the Pegs, no matter how many arms and legs they may have hanging out of their cyborgs when they invade this ship.”
Winslade squinted at me. People did that to me all the time. Usually it meant they were dreaming up a secondary, more sinister meaning to every statement I made.
One of his stick-like fingers came up and wagged at me. “You’re far too glib about this. First, you somehow managed to get yourself assigned to this critical juncture. Then you proceeded to visit Gold Deck uninvited and unannounced. None of this smells right. I’m going to have to report your activities to the praetor.”
“Please do, sir. 3rd Unit can always use some well-deserved praise from the higher-ups.”
Winslade made a pffing sound of dismissal and tapped at his arm for a moment. He appeared to be sending out a message. I did my best to look like a moron throughout this process.
At last, he lowered his arm and gave me a nasty, self-satisfied smile.
“There. All fixed, McGill. Good luck!”
Frowning at his back, I watched him walk to the elevators. He boarded the first one to respond to his call and was whisked away by it.
Harris came to join me then. “Seems like your fan-club has increased by one overgrown rodent today.”